Chapter 415: A Far Away Tale. The Doctor Sage's Principles
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 415: A Far Away Tale. The Doctor Sage's Principles
Not even blood remained where the vampires had swept through. Shei and Peru buried the dead and tended to the wounded.
The disappearance of an entire city's leadership was a major incident. The panicked citizens of Claudia believed the vampires had attacked because they were displeased by the people's attempts to seek the Sky God's forgiveness. Neither Shei nor Peru bothered to correct this assumption. It was easier to let them believe what they already accepted than to try and make them understand the truth.
The only silver lining was that Claudia's Guardians of Thunder and the Thunderarch had no family or relatives. They were chosen by fate—outcasts abandoned by their families, with no one but destiny to take them in.
Thus, Claudia was able to direct its pure, unadulterated rage at the Duchy, untainted by grief. Whether that was a good thing, however, was another matter.
Still, the chaos in Claudia did not last long.
The Thunder God had vanished, and the Thunderarch was dead. In their place, a new Goldenarch had appeared. What's more, this Goldenarch wielded the powers of both the Golden Lord and the Thunder God. To the people of the Fallen Dominion, who had lived in terror of those two Divines, the Goldenarch's arrival felt like a divine revelation.
A revelation that they no longer had to live as fugitives in the Fallen Dominion.
Peru, the focus of all this strange excitement, tension, and hope... was currently in the Lightning Tower, among the patients.
Shei clutched her head as she looked at Peru, who was groaning in agony.
"Ugh. What am I supposed to do? What good are you lying here with the other patients?"
"...Ugh."
"Never mind. Don't talk. Just focus on recovering."
Sweating profusely, Peru lay back down. Shei sighed, gazing at the endless rows of the wounded.
The Thunder Disciples were helping, but their strength and experience were negligible. A disaster had already struck, and Peru was the key to resolving it. But with Peru herself bedridden, Shei felt like she was about to explode with frustration.
"As if the King of Humans hasn't made my head spin enough already..."
Shei trailed off, lost in thought.
The King of Humans. The predecessor to the King of Sins, and perhaps the key to resolving this whole mess.
But thinking about it tangled the threads of causality. In the future Shei knew, the King of Sins had originated from the same source as the King of Humans, but he was a distinctly different being. He was a calamity who wielded the power of countless Divines, destroying everything in his path. Besides having a human form, he had nothing in common with Hughes.
Not even his appearance or gender.
"The timeline doesn't add up... Even if Hughes had died the moment he met me, and a new King of Humans had been born in his place, it wouldn't have happened like this. Besides, I never sensed any particular power from Hughes in the first place."
Still, it was hard to doubt he was the King of Humans. His actions so far had been too bizarre. Even if she were to concede that it was just the rampage of a madman, the Sanctum had officially recognized him. Hughes had to be the King of Humans.
"Then, if I hadn't gone to the Abyss, would Hughes have..."
It wouldn't be surprising if Hughes had survived... but not while trapped in the Abyss.
Shei considered the possibility, then shook her head.
"Ah, whatever. I can figure it out later. Right now, the priority is..."
She could leave Peru behind, but Peru was also a being acknowledged by two Divines. She was needed to quell the chaos in Claudia and stabilize the powers of the Divines.
Most importantly, she couldn't just let her die.
Having sorted out her thoughts, Shei made a decision. As long as Hughes was under the Progenitor's protection, he wouldn't be in any immediate danger.
"I have to save the Witherarch first."
Once the decision was made, she had to choose a method.
Peru was holding her broken body together with her power alone. Neither elixirs nor Qi Arts had any effect. As far as Shei knew, there was only one person who could heal her.
The Doctor Sage, Lyre Nightingale.
"At this point in time, she hasn't created her coven yet, so it has to be Lyre herself. For the crime of killing Luscynia, she should be wandering near the Duchy until Tyrkanzyaka returns... Wait a minute."
Shei stopped mid-sentence, her expression hardening.
Lyre had killed Luscynia and taken his original blood. She had committed the grave sin of murdering an Elder, but by the laws of the Duchy of Mist, one Elder could not punish another. Only the Progenitor could pass judgment on an Elder.
Lyre's sentence had been deferred until Tyrkanzyaka's arrival. The only thing she was forbidden from doing was creating new kin, so she wandered the lands around the Duchy, treating people with the medical skills she had learned. She did so with an almost... greedy fervor.
That was why Shei had expected Lyre to show up here soon, a place overflowing with the wounded...
"Tyrkanzyaka returned to the Duchy!"
She might have run into Tyrkanzyaka on her way here. Or worse, she could be imprisoned until her judgment is passed.
"And what's more, Tyrkanzyaka is fine now! The Progenitor has no reason to show mercy! Damn it. I have to go rescue her...!"
Lyre had been forgiven for the grave sin of murdering an Elder only because she had helped treat the Progenitor. Her contribution was valued so highly that she was spared annihilation and merely exiled.
But now, with the Progenitor perfectly healthy, what Lyre's sentence would be... was anyone's guess. To avoid the worst-case scenario, Shei had to act.
Just as Shei grabbed Chun-aeng and Jizan, preparing to leave.
Someone strode into the makeshift hospital. She had black hair, neatly tied up and wrapped in a kerchief, and wore a short dress that resembled a uniform, complete with an apron. She looked like a maid from some noble house.
But Shei knew better. That uniform was for the sake of her patients. The Doctor Sage always wore a white apron because it made the color of blood stand out.
Shei was stunned to see the very person she'd just been thinking about. Ignoring her, a young Thunder Disciple stepped forward to block the barefoot Doctor Sage.
"Wh-who are you? You can't just come in here...!"
"No. This is precisely where I belong."
The Doctor Sage, Lyre Nightingale, remained impassive in the face of blood and death, calmly taking stock. The groaning wounded, the blood seeping from bandaged injuries, the fear and anguish in their eyes.
She paid no mind to the things that would stir a human heart, maintaining her cold composure as she declared.
"Now, all of you are my patients."
A moment later, a Guardian of Thunder, realizing she was a vampire, struggled to his feet and raised his spear.
"You! A vampire...!"
One of his arms was twisted and heavily bandaged, but in the face of his rage and fear, the pain was nothing. Whether he could win was irrelevant. The Guardian of Thunder lunged, thrusting his spear in a convulsive movement.
Lyre's gaze fell upon him. Her eyes were fixed not on the spearhead, but on his twisted arm. She watched its approach until the last possible second, then produced a thin scalpel that had been concealed in her hand.
Shing. A thin, sharp blade flashed. Lyre moved past the Guardian of Thunder. A moment later, his cleanly severed arm fell to the floor with a wet slap.
Even as a fledgling, an Elder was still an Elder. Having lost his arm in a single exchange, the Guardian of Thunder writhed in agony.
"G-guaaaargh! Aaaaargh! Ahhh!"
The thin blade had sliced through his shoulder, severing the arm. Though twisted and broken, it had still been his. Now, cut off and lying on the ground, it was his no longer.
Just as everyone began to think that the cruel vampire had returned to slaughter them all.
Only Shei felt a sense of relief.
The Doctor Sage was always the Doctor Sage. That was just who she was.
"I will take responsibility for your cause of death. If any of you die, it will be because of my incompetence. Nothing more."
The severed arm twitched on the floor. The Guardian of Thunder, writhing on the ground, was baffled to feel his pain suddenly vanish.
"Huh? Wh-what...?"
The bleeding had stopped.
It was a bizarre sight. Blood flowed from the stump, but instead of scattering, the droplets formed a stream in mid-air. They flowed toward the severed arm, heading exactly where they would have gone if the limb had never been cut.
Threads of crimson blood connected the stump to the severed arm, as if they were still a single body.
No, in the first place... what did it even mean to be a single body?
"It seems it would be better to sever it and reattach it properly. However, I will tend to that after I have treated forty-four others. Your death is forty-fifth in line."
First fear, then amazement, and finally, curiosity. That was how she took command of her patients. In the awed silence, Lyre moved, scalpel in hand. Her criteria were clear: the one closest to death came first. To save everyone, you had to start with the patient who would die first. That was Lyre's principle.
Shei approached Lyre cautiously. Lyre paid her little mind, focused on slicing open a patient's body with her scalpel to assess their condition. She called it treatment, but to an onlooker, it looked more like a gentle butchering of a living person.
Waving away the other Guardians of Thunder who were about to approach, Shei asked in a low voice.
"Is there anything you need?"
Without even glancing in her direction, Lyre replied.
"I'm short on blood. I only have enough on hand for thirty people. From the thirty-first patient onward, I will require a new supply."
"But you can't just use any blood without processing it, can you? The body rejects foreign blood. Without medicine to suppress that reaction, you'd have to monitor them constantly."
Lyre finally showed a flicker of interest. The fact that the body has a rejection response to foreign blood was no secret. It was common knowledge for vampires, and even Qi practitioners were aware of it.
But the fact that it could be suppressed with medicine was not widely known. Not unless one belonged to Luscynia's coven, who studied Blood Aura and the intricacies of the body itself.
Shei, of course, had learned this from the Lyre of the future. Facing the now-curious Doctor Sage, she pointed toward Peru.
"The Goldenarch is wounded. If she were well, she could create homunculi. As it happens, the Guardians of Thunder here are of mixed homunculus blood. With blood from a homunculus, you could quickly replenish their supply with a much lower risk of rejection."
The source of this knowledge. How to create a homunculus. Whether its blood truly caused less rejection.
She had no certainty. She didn't know the answers. But these people were her patients now. All their lives rested on her judgment.
Either way, these were all lives that had to be saved. Even a moment's hesitation was a waste of time. Lyre made her decision.
"Lead the way."
Lyre had a principle: treat the patient who would die first. She never altered the order for personal reasons, as doing so would lessen the chance of saving everyone.
However... principles meant nothing in the face of death. If she could prevent a death by bending her principles, Lyre would bend them a hundred times over.
The responsibility for a patient's death rested with her, not with her principles.
She would never, not even on the day of her own annihilation, make the excuse that she failed to save a life because she was upholding a principle.